On the go?

Flagfox5.0.13No Restart

Displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website's server and provides a multitude of tools such as site safety checks, whois, translation, similar sites, validation, URL shortening, and more...

About this Add-on

Flagfox is an extension that displays a flag icon indicating the current webserver's physical location. Knowing where you're connected to adds an extra layer of awareness to your browsing and can be useful to indicate the native languages and legal jurisdictions that may apply. Additional information can be obtained via a multitude of external lookups and users can add their own custom actions. All actions can be added to the flag icon's context menu and set to icon click or keyboard shortcuts for quick access.

Clicking the flag icon loads our default action, Geotool, which gives a detailed map showing the city the server is in and other useful information such as its local time and ISP. Many other actions are available for a wide range of uses such as:

Flagfox is simple, unobtrusive, and uses relatively little resources. In order to protect your privacy, country lookups are done locally rather than asking an external server about every page you browse to. It works by accessing an internal IP address location database, basically a rough map of the physical layout of the Internet, based on data provided by Maxmind. This gives a flag for the nationality of the actual location of the server you're connected to, rather than just the nationality of the domain name which may be different. Flagfox updates are provided on a monthly basis to keep this internal database accurate.

Here's a short FAQ with questions that are asked frequently. Read the full Flagfox FAQ for more.

Can Flagfox be useful for security?Flagfox can be used as a warning as to when a server isn't where it should be. If you end up at a site claiming to be an American bank, and it shows as Nigerian, then you may want to think twice. However, while this can be useful, Flagfox should not be relied on for this as a scam site can be in America just as easily as anywhere else.

Is Flagfox sending information about where I'm browsing to some server?Not during normal browsing, no. Flagfox uses an internal database of IP address locations and does not send anything anywhere during normal browsing. If you use one of the lookup features, such as Geotool or whois, then that server will be sent the necessary info (IP address or domain name) that one time to do the lookup. There are some other extensions that have some features similar to Flagfox and they do, however, send all of your browsing habits to their server to provide their information. Flagfox respects users' privacy and makes a point to not do that. (see the Flagfox privacy policy)

It's showing the wrong flag!Maybe, but probably not. Sites can be hosted anywhere, they can have domains of any nationality, and can have multiple cache servers sending out the same site from different locations. Flagfox looks up the actual location of the server you're connected to using its IP address and a database maintained by Maxmind, which may or may not be where you'd expect it to be. (read this for more info)

One of the actions does something I don't like.Each action is its own site; we certainly don't run them all, just Geotool. Use Adblock Plus to deal with any minor ads if you need to and if any action breaks or starts doing something evil please report it to us. Flagfox is quite configurable, so if you don't like the actions included feel free to use your own. You can get more and suggest your own on our forums.

Does Flagfox support IPv6 yet?Yes! Flagfox has full IPv6 support and monthly updates contain both IPv4 and IPv6 database updates.

Don't post bug reports, support requests, or feature suggestions in reviews! This is NOT a forum and Mozilla will eventually delete non-review reviews. Post any questions, problems, or suggestions on the Flagfox forum or comment on the blog or email me directly.

Version Information

Version 5.0.13
Released March 12, 2015
745.4 kB
Works with
Firefox 17.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.14 and later

Privacy Policy

Flagfox extension privacy policy:During normal browsing with this extension installed, no data is sent anywhere. Location lookups are done via an internal IP address location database (IPDB) kept accurate by routine extension updates. Lookups for each page location are done via a single hit to the DNS cache and the Flagfox internal database. If you are behind a proxy without local DNS access and you have your application properly set to not allow local DNS requests, Flagfox will alert you and disable its features that rely on it.

Geotool privacy policy:The default action when clicking on the flag icon is our service called Geotool. It provides more detailed location information and additional webserver information. When accessing Geotool, Flagfox sends the current server's host name and IP address in the URL to be used as the basis to look up this additional information. Geotool is also sent version information for your current Flagfox install using a cookie. This information cannot be used to track anyone, as all people using the same version of Flagfox will use the same cookie to identify their same Flagfox version. Geotool uses this version information to grant full access to Flagfox users and restrict usage by potential external abusers of the Geotool service. This information is only sent when using Geotool through Flagfox.

External services privacy policies:Flagfox provides access to many external web services using Flagfox "actions", some of which are available by default and others can be added or created by you. Each of these actions are different and are all run by third parties with no direct relationship to Flagfox, Geotool, or the people who develop them. Each service will be sent just the relevant information it needs to do its lookup. This may be information about the current server/page such as its, URL, IP address, host name, country, or some of the current page's metadata, such as but not limited to its title, description, or author. Some actions may also send your currently selected language to ask the service to render its results in your language, if possible. This information is only sent when using these services and only the minimum necessary information is ever sent. Please refer to each service's posted privacy policy for additional information. If you believe that any service provided by a default Flagfox action has a privacy policy that is or has changed to be incompatible with our general privacy principles, please let us know on our forums or via email.

Statistics:Flagfox tracks nothing. Geotool logs basic information for the purposes of statistics and abuse resistance. Additional actions have their own privacy policies on this matter which you should refer to. Mozilla collects basic statistics when any addon hosted on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) such as Flagfox checks for updates, such as but not limited to the versions of the addon, application, and operating system. Please refer to Mozilla's privacy policy for additional information. These statistics are recorded in aggregate and are publicly available for Flagfox.